nd followed him at once
to the rooms where the weapons had been deposited for use.

Breastplates girt on to their bodies, and swords wielded in their hands
made soldiers of the sages at once, and inspired them with martial ardor.
Little was spoken among these heroes of "the mighty word." They were bent
on action. Olympius Had desired Apuleius to go into his private room
adjoining the hypostyle with Porphyrius, on whose senseless and rigid
state no treatment had as yet had any effect. Some of the temple-servants
carried the merchant down a back staircase, while Olympius hastily and
silently led his comrades in arms up the main steps into the great halls
of the temple.

Here the chivalrous host were doomed to surprise and disappointment
greater than the most hopeless of them was prepared to meet. Olympius
himself for a moment despaired; for his ecstatic adherents had during the
night turned to poltroons and tipplers, and the sacred precincts of the
sanctuary looked as if a battle had been fought and lost there. Broken
and bruised furniture, smashed instruments, garments torn and wet,
draggled wreaths, and faded flowers were strewn in every direction. The
red wine lay in pools like blood on the scarred beauties of the inlaid
pavement; here and there, at the foot of a column, lay an inert
body--whether dead or merely senseless who could guess?--and the
sickening reek of hundreds of dying lamps filled the air, for in the
confusion they had been left to burn or die as they might.

And how wretched was the aspect of the sobered, terror-stricken, worn-out
men and women. An obscure consciousness of having insulted the god and
incurred his wrath lurked in every soul. To many a one prompt death would
have seemed most welcome, and one man--a promising pupil of Helladius,
had actually taken the leap from existence into the non-existence which,
as he believed, he should find beyond the grave; he had run his had
violently against a pillar, and lay at the foot of it with a broken
skull.

With reeling brains, aching brows, and dejected hearts, the unhappy
creatures had got so far as to curse the present; and those who dared to
contemplate the future thought of it only as a bottomless abyss, towards
which the flying hours were dragging them with unfelt but irresistible
force. Time was passing--each could feel and see that; night was gone, it
would soon be day; the storm had passed over, but instead of the
inexorable powers of nature